"Thy lips are sweet," he said, and kissed her. But then he got out of the narrow bed and began to dress.

"Still, I must away. Duty calls." Duty would consist of more rehearsals for El mejor mozo de Espa?a .

Lope knew he would go back to his games with Catalina Iba?ez. The more he saw of Don Alejandro de Recalde's mistress, the more games he wanted to play with her. That didn't mean he despised Lucy, but the thrill of the chase was gone.Softly, Lucy began to weep. "Would thou gavest me all thy duty."

"I may not. What I may give thee, I do." What I don't give to Catalina, Lope thought. Lucy knew nothing of the other woman. Lope dabbed at her face with the coverlet. "Here, dry thine eyes. We'll meet again, and soon. And when we do meet, let it be with gladness."

"I always come to thee with gladness," the Englishwoman said. "But when thou goest . . ." She shook her head and snuffled. At last, though, she too sat up and reached for the clothes she'd so carelessly let fall to the floor a little while earlier.

By then, Lope was pulling on his boots. He'd had plenty of practice dressing in a hurry. He didn't urge Lucy to move faster. Better--more discreet--if they weren't seen coming down the stairs together from the rooms above this alehouse. He kissed her again. "Think of me whilst we are parted, that the time until we meet again might seem the shorter."

Even as he tasted her tears on his lips, she shook her head. "Always it is an age, an eternity. Never knew I time crawled so slow."

He had no answer for that, or none that would make her happy. That being so, he slipped out of the cramped little room without another word. Before long, Lucy would come forth, too. What else could she do, after all? The stairs were uneven and rickety. He stepped carefully on them, and used care of a different sort going out through the throng of Englishmen drinking below. He walked very erect, hand on the hilt of his rapier, as if eager for one of them to challenge him. Because he looked so ready, none did.

Behind him, one of them asked, "What doth the don here?"

"What doth he? Why, his doxy," a drawer answered, and masculine laughter rose from the crowd. De Vega ignored it. The server wasn't even wrong, or not very wrong, though Lucy Watkins was no wh.o.r.e.

She'd fallen in love with Lope as he'd fallen in love with her. If she hadn't, he would have lost interest in her right away. Getting to a woman's secret place was easy. Getting to her heart was harder, and mattered more.

His own heart leaped when he began directing Catalina Iba?ez, explaining to her just exactly how she as Isabella was falling in love with the soldier playing Ferdinand of Aragon. And if you as yourself happen to fall in love with me as I think I'm falling in love with you . . . Lope thought. He intended to give Catalina all the help he could along those lines.

No matter what he intended, though, he had to restrain himself for the time being. "Don Alejandro, darling!" Catalina Iba?ez squealed when a handsome, tawny-bearded fellow strutted into the courtyard where Lope was putting his mostly ragtag company through its paces. "You did come to see me rehea.r.s.e!"

"I told you I would," Don Alejandro de Recalde replied, bowing to her. "I keep my word." He nodded to Lope. "You are the playwright, se?or ?"

"At your service, your Excellency," Lope said, with a bow of his own. At your mistress' service.

Especially at your mistress' service.

If the n.o.bleman knew what was in de Vega's mind, he gave no sign of it. With another friendly nod, he said, "I've been listening to Catalina practicing her lines these past few days, and I have to tell you I'm impressed. I heard a good many dreary comedies in Madrid that couldn't come close to what you're doing here in this G.o.dforsaken wilderness."Slightly dazed, Lope murmured, "You're far too kind, your Excellency." He scratched his head. He wasn't impervious to guilt. Here was this fellow praising his work, and he wanted to sleep with the man's mistress? He took another look at Catalina Iba?ez, at her sparking eyes, the delicate arch of her nose, her red lips and white teeth, the sweetly curved figure her brocaded dress displayed. Well, as a matter of fact, yes, Lope thought. The game is worth the candle.

"Do I hear you write plays in English as well as Spanish?" Don Alejandro asked.

"No, sir, that is not so. I speak English, but I have never tried to write it," de Vega answered. "I am working with Se?or Shakespeare, though, on his play about his Most Catholic Majesty. The Englishman has even written a small part for me into his King Philip. That may be what you heard."

"Yes, it could be," de Recalde agreed, still friendly and polite. "Would you do me the honor of letting me see what you have here so far?"

Lope didn't really want to do that. The production was still ragged, and no one knew it better than he.

But he saw no way to refuse a n.o.bleman's request: however polite it sounded, it was really more a n.o.bleman's order. He did feel he could warn de Recalde: "It won't be the show you'd see in a few more days."

"Of course. Of course." Don Alejandro waved aside the objection. "But I do want to see how my sweetheart's lines fit in with everybody else's."

He gazed fondly at Catalina Iba?ez. Lope would have sold his soul for the look she sent the n.o.bleman in return. But then she turned one equally warm on him, as she said, "He's given me such lovely words to use."

"He certainly has," Don Alejandro agreed. Because of his wealth and good looks, was he too complacent to believe Catalina might be interested in a man who had little to offer but words? If he was that complacent, did he have reason to be so?

I hope not, Lope thought. Aloud, he said, "Take your places, everyone! We're going to start from the beginning for his Excellency. . . . Madre de Dios! Somebody kick Diego and wake him up."

Diego rose with a yelp. "What was that for?" he demanded indignantly. "I wasn't asleep. I was only resting my eyes."

Arguing with him was more trouble than it was worth. De Vega didn't try. He just said, "No time for rest now, lazybones. We're going to take it from the top for Don Alejandro, so he can see what we've been up to."

"Ah, se?or , since when have you wanted anybody knowing what you're up to?" Diego murmured, his eyes sliding towards Catalina Iba?ez. Lope coughed and spluttered. Diego might make a miserable excuse for a servant, but that didn't mean he didn't know the man he served so badly. Instead of looking at Catalina himself, Lope glanced toward Alejandro de Recalde. The n.o.bleman, fortunately, hadn't paid any attention to Diego.

"Places! Places!" Lope shouted, submerging would-be lover so playwright and director could come forth. Being all those people at once, he sometimes felt very crowded inside. Were other people also so complex? When he thought of Diego, he had his doubts. When he thought of Christopher Marlowe . . . I won't think of Marlowe, he told himself. He's gone, and I don't have to worry about seizing him any more. But oh, by G.o.d, how I'll miss his poetry.De Vega's own poetry poured forth from his amateur company. He screamed, cajoled, prompted, and kept looking at Don Alejandro. Catalina's keeper plainly enjoyed El mejor mozo de Espa?a . He laughed in all the right places, and clapped loud enough to seem a bigger audience than he was. He didn't applaud only his mistress, either, which proved him a gentleman.

When the play ended, Catalina Iba?ez curtsied to him. Then, deliberately, as if she really were Queen Isabella, she curtsied to Lope, too. He bowed in return, also as if she were the Queen. Don Alejandro de Recalde laughed and cheered for them both. Catalina's eyes lit up. She smiled out at the n.o.bleman--but somehow managed to include Lope in that smile, too.

She's trying to see how close to the wind she can sail, he realized, playing games with me right under Don Alejandro's nose. He'll kill her--and likely me, too--if he notices. But if he doesn't--oh, if he doesn't . . .

Lope slid closer to her. As softly as he could, he murmured, "When can I see you? Alone?"

Had she shown surprise then, surprise or offense, he would have been a dead man. But she, unlike most of her companions here, really was an actress; Lope had had that thought before. "Soon," she whispered back. "Very soon." Her expression never changed, not a bit.

She's going to betray Don Alejandro, Lope thought. How long before she betrays me, too? His eyes traveled the length of her again. For the life of him--and he knew it might be for the life of him--he couldn't make himself worry about that.

THOMAS VINCENT HELD sheets of paper under Shakespeare's nose. " 'Steeth, Master Vincent, mind what you do," Shakespeare said. "None should look on those who hath not strongest need."

"Be you not amongst that number?" the prompter returned. "Methought you'd fain see our scribe his work."

"I have seen his work," Shakespeare said. "Had I not, I had given you the name of another."

But he took a sheet from Vincent even so. Thomas Phelippes had had to work like a man possessed to copy out all the parts of Boudicca so quickly. However fast he'd written, though, his script hadn't suffered. It remained as clear as it had been when he'd demonstrated it in Shakespeare's ordinary.

"You could get no better," Shakespeare said, and Thomas Vincent nodded. The poet gave back the part.

"Now then--make this disappear. Place it not where any sneaking spy nor prowling Spaniard might come upon't."

"I am not so fond as you hold me," the prompter said. "None shall see it but he whose part it is--and him I shall not suffer to take it from the Theatre."

"Marry, I hope you do not," Shakespeare said. "Yet will even that suffice us? For know you, we may also be done to death by slanderous tongues."

"I know't well, sir: too well, by Jesu," Vincent replied. "Here I am come unto a fear of death, a terrible and unavoided danger."

"Let only the fear thereof be unavoided, the thing itself pa.s.sing over us like the Angel of Death o'er the children of Israel in Egypt. From this nettle, danger, may we pluck the flower, safety."Before Thomas Vincent could answer, one of the tireman's helpers who stood at the entrance to the Theatre began to whistle the tune to a particular bawdy song. The players on the stage, who'd begun learning their parts for Boudicca, switched on the instant to rehearsing the piece they would put on that afternoon. The prompter said, "Mark you, now--in sooth, they do vanish." He vanished himself, disappearing into the tiring room.

Shakespeare wished he too could disappear. No such luck. Instead, he walked out to greet Lieutenant de Vega, of whose arrival that bawdy song had warned. "G.o.d give you good morrow," he called, and made a leg at the Spaniard.

"And you, sir." Lope swept off his hat and bowed in return. "You are well, I hope?"

"Pa.s.sing well, I thank you." Shakespeare didn't mind exchanging courtesies with de Vega. As long as they talked in commonplaces, peril seemed far away. It wasn't; he knew that full well. But it seemed so, and even the semblance of tranquility was precious.

"How fares King Philip?" Lope asked.

"Pa.s.sing well," Shakespeare repeated, adding, "or so I hope." The commission he had from Don Diego Flores de Vald?s was far safer than the one Lord Burghley had given him. Part of him hoped Lord Westmorland's Men would offer their auditors King Philip, not Boudicca. That would pluck safety from the nettle of danger. It would be a craven's safety, but safety nonetheless. Let Boudicca once see the light of day, and. . .

Let Boudicca once see the light of day, and G.o.d grant I get free of England, as Kit hath done, Shakespeare thought. England had lain under the Spaniards' boots for almost ten years now. Could she rise up and cast them out? If she could, why hadn't she long since?

"How fares King Philip himself?" he inquired.

Lope de Vega frowned. "Not well, I fear me: not well at all. Late word from Spain hath it he waxeth dropsical, his belly and thighs now much distended whilst his other members waste away."

He crossed himself. Shakespeare did the same. He couldn't quite hide a shudder. He'd seen the horrid bloating of dropsy, seen it rob its victims of life an inch at a time. They'd had to press a board against one luckless player's belly to help him make water, as if they were squeezing the juice from grapes in a wine press. Next to that, the swift certainty of the gallows seemed a mercy. But you'd have no swift end, not now. . . .

"Best you finish the play, quick as you might," de Vega told him. "Soon enough--all too soon--the company will show it forth."

"It lacks but little," Shakespeare said.

"Glad I am to hear you say so," the Spaniard said. "As soon as all the parts be finished, let your prompter give them to the scribes, that they might make fair copies of them for the players to learn by heart."

"Certes, your honor. Just as you say, so shall it be." Now Shakespeare bowed. "You know well the customary usages of a theatre not your own."

He put more sarcasm into that than perhaps he should have. De Vega, fortunately, did not seem to notice. He answered, "They are not so different from those of Spain. Your prompter is new to his work, not so?""Indeed, his predecessor having . . . died." Guilt stabbed at Shakespeare. He did his best not to show it.

De Vega here might one day talk to Constable Strawberry, and Strawberry, in his own plodding way, had already connected Shakespeare and Ingram Frizer, though he didn't quite know what connections he'd made.

But, for now, Lope de Vega's attention focused on King Philip and the problems involved in producing it. "An he have trouble finding scribes fit for the matter, I ken a man who'd suit it."

"Ah?" Shakespeare said: the most noncommittal noise he could make.

Lope nodded. "Ay, sir: an Englishman already in the employ of Don Diego, and thus acquainted with all you purpose here. I have seen his writing, and know him to have an excellent character, most legible. He is called Thomas . . . ah . . . Phelippes."

He p.r.o.nounced the name in the Spanish manner, as if it had three syllables. That kept Shakespeare from recognizing it for a moment. When he did, he felt as if a thunderbolt had crashed to earth at his feet. Lope knew Phelippes well enough to know what sort of scribe he made? Did the Spanish officer have a fair copy of Boudicca? Had he got it before Thomas Vincent got his?

Whom may I trust? Shakespeare wondered dizzily. Vincent? Phelippes? Nick Skeres? Lord Burghley? Anyone in all the world? The deeper into the plot he sank, the closer he came to the moment when the company would offer one play or the other, the more certain he became that no one had any business ever trusting anyone else.

"What think you, se?or ?" Lope asked when Shakespeare didn't answer right away.

"Master Vincent, meseems, hath already scribes enough for the work," Shakespeare said, picking his words with the greatest of care. "You were wiser, though, to speak to him in this matter than to me. He is quite out of countenance with my character, reckoning it to show mine own bad character."

The Spanish officer chuckled at his feeble wordplay, not knowing how hard Shakespeare was working to distract him and to conceal his own alarm. "As you suggest, so shall I do," de Vega said. "Shall I find him in the tiring room?"

"I know not," Shakespeare replied, hoping Vincent had had the sense, and the time, to hide the fair copy--the fair copy Thomas Phelippes had written out!--of Boudicca.

"I'll seek him there," Lope said, and off he went before Shakespeare could try to delay him any more. No howls of fright or fury came from behind the stage, so Shakespeare dared hope the prompter had proved prompt enough in concealing the dangerous play.

Shakespeare had only a small part in the day's production, Marlowe's Caligula. The poet was fled, but his plays lived on. Shakespeare would have been glad with more to do; he might have worried less. As things were, he'd never been so glad to escape the Theatre once the show was done.

He hadn't gone far towards London before Richard Burbage fell into step with him. "Give you good even," the other player said, and then, "It went right well, methought."

He'd played the t.i.tle role, and milked it for all it was worth. Still, Shakespeare nodded; as Marlowe had written it, the role was worth milking. "This was the frightfullest Roman of them all," Shakespeare said.

"In sooth, he is a choice bit of work," Burbage said. "And, in sooth, could we but show more of what he did, he'd seem frightfuller yet.""It wonders me the Master of the Revels gave Kit leave to present e'en as much as the play offers,"

Shakespeare said.

"Come the day, we'll show more than Sir Edmund wots of," Burbage observed.

"Come the day," Shakespeare echoed. "And, by what the Spaniard saith, the day comes soon: Philip hath declined further." He walked along for a few paces, then added, "Or, come the day, we'll give the auditors King Philip, and all will weep for fallen glory."

Burbage was also silent for a little while. "Peradventure we will," he said at last. "But ere I sleep each night, I pray G.o.d they'll see the other." Here in Sh.o.r.editch High Street, he named no names. Who could tell which jade or ragam.u.f.fin might take some incautious word to the dons or the English Inquisition?

"Well, d.i.c.k, your prayer, at least, is to the purpose," Shakespeare said wearily. "When I pet.i.tion the Lord, it is that He let this cup pa.s.s from me. I fear me, though, He hears me not." He threw his hands in the air. " 'Swounds, why fled I not this madness or ever it laid hold of me?"

"The heart hath its reasons, whereof reason knoweth naught," Burbage said.

Shakespeare stopped in surprise. "That is well said. Is't your own?" When Burbage nodded, Shakespeare set a hand on his shoulder. "When next Will Kemp a.s.sails you as being but the mouthpiece for other men, cast defiance in's teeth."

"So I would, and so I will," the other player answered. "But gramercy for your courtesy."

"Your servant, sir," Shakespeare said. "Would I were penning some trifling comedy of lovers loving will they, nill they; I'd engraft your line therein fast as ever I could." He sighed. "Shall I ever again labor over aught so sweet and simple?"

"But if all go well . . ." Burbage said.

"Perhaps," Shakespeare said, and said no more. He didn't want his hopes to rise too high. They would only have further to fall.

Burbage might have sensed as much. Instead of going on with the argument, he pointed ahead.

"Bishopsgate draws nigh. Spring at last being arrived, it likes me having daylight left once we've strutted and fretted our two hours upon the stage."

"Why, it doth like me as well," Shakespeare said in surprise. He clapped a hand to his forehead. "By my troth, d.i.c.k, I've scarce noted proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, putting a spirit of youth in everything. Goose quill and paper have compa.s.sed round my life."

"Belike, for it's April no moe," Burbage told him. "These are May's new-fangled shows, and far from the best of 'em."

"May?" Shakespeare cried. "Surely not! Surely they'd have decked the streets with greenery, as is the custom, and burnt bonfires, and run up maypoles for that they might dance round 'em."

"Surely they would have. Surely they did. Surely you never marked it." Richard Burbage eyed him with amused pity.

"Wait!" Shakespeare snapped his fingers. "I mind me we gave the groundlings The Taming of the Shrew on the day. There! D'you see? I had some knowledge of it after all." That felt very important to him just then.Burbage's expression changed not a jot. "And so we did. But why know you of it? Only for that it came to pa.s.s within the Theatre's bourne. Otherwise . . ." He shook his head.

As usual, Irishmen with long, hungry faces and fiery eyes stood guard at Bishopsgate. The gallowgla.s.ses glowered at Shakespeare and Burbage: the two players were big enough and young enough to seem dangerous no matter how mildly they behaved. One of the guards said something in his own musical language, of which Shakespeare understood not a word. Another started to draw his sword. But their sergeant--distinguishable only because he was a few years older and a little more scarred--shook his head. He waved the Englishmen into London, saying, "Pa.s.s through. Quick now, mind."

"Lean raw-boned rascals," Burbage muttered, but he made sure the gallowgla.s.ses couldn't hear him.

"I do despise the b.l.o.o.d.y cannibals," Shakespeare agreed, also in a low voice. "May they prove roast meat for worms."

"G.o.d grant it!" Burbage said. "That the dons lord it over us is one thing--they earned the right, having beaten us in war. But these redpolled swashbucklers?" He shook his head. "Men who'd never dare rise against the Spaniards will run riot to cast out Irish wolves."

"Ay, belike." Shakespeare wondered if Sir William Cecil had thought of inflaming Londoners against the savages from the western island. Likely he will have, the poet thought. He sees so much; would he have missed that? Still, he resolved to speak of it to Lord Burghley when next he saw him, or to Nick Skeres or Thomas Phelippes if he didn't see the n.o.ble soon.

Phelippes? Shakespeare kicked a pebble into a puddle. Whom did the clever, dusty little man really serve? Sir William? Don Diego? Or only himself, first, last, and always? As soon as Shakespeare shaped the question, he saw what the answer had to be. But where, in the end, would Phelippes judge his interest lay? And how much would that cost everyone on the other side?

Burbage clapped him on the back. "I'm to mine own house. G.o.d give you good even, Will."